About Me

Although I haven't gotten a western made yet, there's interest in a western series I've created (on paper). If you'd like to take a look at the sort of things I write, please visit my website, www.henrycparke.com. Thanks for looking!

MY Q&A WITH INSP-TV

HENRY ON ‘WRITER’S BLOCK’

On July 30th, 2015, I was the guest of hosts Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Christina on ‘Writer’s Block’, their L.A. TALK-RADIO talk-show about the art and craft of writing. You can click PLAY to hear it, or DOWNLOAD to download it.

ROUND-UP ON THE RADIO!

Last Christmastime I was a guest on AROUND THE BARN, and had a great time talking about the Round-up, my writing, and Gene Autry’s Christmas music. To listen, click HERE.

Other Stuff I Write

While this blog is strictly about Western stuff, I also write another blog, Stalling Tactics, which is about anything else. If you'd like to read my most recent post, COSTUME DRAMA TRAUMA, go HERE.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

In last week’s Round-up, I shared part one of my
visit to the set of BOONVILLE REDEMPTION at Paramount
Ranch (if you missed it, the link is HERE . If you missed my earlier story about
being ‘background’ on the film, that link is HERE .) Here is the conclusion of my report,
beginning with my interview with director Don Schroeder.

DON SCHROEDER Interview

HENRY: How
did you get involved in this project?

DON SCHRODER:
Judy Belshe-Toernblom called up just before Christmas in 2012 and asked,
“How would you like to direct a feature film?”
Okay! Can I look at the script? And it was really quite wonderful, so I
accepted immediately. It’s a great
opportunity – a great story. The first
thing I said after I read it is, I could do this. Even though it’s my first feature, believe it
or not I’ve made two or three-hundred other films.

HENRY: What
sort of the films were the others?

DON: Mostly
I’ve been doing informational films, public service announcements,
documentaries, that sort of thing. I’ve won Emmy
Awards for documentaries, and I won a Golden
Angel Award for a narrative film I directed Robert Mitchum and Rhonda
Fleming in.

HENRY: Wow, tell me about that one.

DON: It was called WAITING FOR THE WIND; it was a
thirty-minute special for Lutheran Television, in the 90s. It’s about a farmer with a boat on his pasture,
who’s always wanted to sail around the world.
Robert Mitchum played the farmer, and Rhonda Fleming played his wife.

Don Schroeder

HENRY: Had
you done any westerns before BOONVILLE?

DON: No,
that’s what’s so exciting about this.

HENRY: What
do you see as the big differences between doing a western, and the other genres
you’ve worked in?

DON: Well,
the thing about a Western is the technology is 19th century. So much of our world today is digits, but in
the 19th century they had a physical
world, and what’s great thing about that is it’s cinematic. Because you’re dealing with things, objects,
and you interact with the world.

HENRY: Were
there any surprises things you didn’t anticipate in a Western until you were
actually doing it?

DON: The
horses – you’re really don’t know what it’s like to work with them until you
get there. And I really respect the
wranglers, because they’re very safe. The
thing about horses is they’re horses;
they’re not people. The wranglers have
really been careful. You have to think
how a horse is going to think. You don’t
put things over their heads, for example; that can excite them. They like to have friends around, they don’t
like to work by themselves; they’re herd animals. With movie-trained horses, when you say
“action” they understand they’re supposed to act. But sometimes if you yell “Action!” loud enough they’ll start to run. It’s very different working with horses; it’s
been a lot of fun.

HENRY: You’re
again working with very familiar actors – Pat Boone, Ed Asner, Diane Ladd. What is the difference in your approach,
working with known actors like that, versus people who are certainly talented
but not necessarily well known?

DON: I used to recoil at the idea of working with
big stars, and it finally dawned on me that the reason they’re name talent is
they’re really good! So, it’s been a
dream – the casting that Judy’s done has been just spectacular. You expect that the actors bring something to
the party; that they not only know their lines, but they’ve thought about the
character, know what their backstory is.
What mannerisms they may have developed.
And these people are real pros – they do that, they bring something to
the party, and it’s always more than you expected. Diane Ladd was just spectacular, and amplified
the role way beyond anything we expected.

HENRY: I
understand she does part of her role in Boontling. What is it like directing in an almost
foreign language?

DON: She had
a little trouble with Boontling; it was difficult for her, and I have to give
her credit, because she mastered it. She
did a beautiful job. It was like doing a
part in a foreign language; she had some long speeches with Boontling, and she
was fine.

HENRY: Would
you call the film’s genre more of a western or a mystery?

DON: I would
call it a family drama. It’s set in 1906, Boonville, California, and primarily
a family drama.

HENRY: Who do
you see as the natural audience for this film?

DON: That’s a
good question. It’s a family film. I’m sort of pointing it at a thirteen-year-old
girl because that’s the protagonist.

HENRY: What
should I know about you, and this production, that I don’t know?

DON: You know
what really helps is to have the executive producer. Judy’s been 35 years doing casting, and it’s
made an enormous difference. Because she
has really gathered a tremendous cast. I
don’t mean just the lead parts, the name parts, but all the rest of the roles
are character people with years and years of experience. She chose carefully, and we have a
tremendously rich cast, which makes my job a whole lot easier.

HENRY: I know
that you’re a film teacher at Loyola Marymount University, as well as a
filmmaker. Which is good, because there
are so many who teach it, who have never done it. And we are now a generation where most of us
in the business have gone to film school.
I went to NYU.

DON: I went
to U.S.C.

HENRY: How
does working with students and training new filmmakers effect what you do
on-set?

DON: What’s fun is the other way around – what I
do here effects how I go about teaching.
Now this experience is so rich I’ll be able to bring a lot of it back to
the classroom. The kind of equipment we
need to have, what goes into making a shot.
We have a behind-the-scenes photographer, one of my former students,
taking pictures. And I gave her an assignment;
I told her I’d like you to shoot all of the different elements that go into
making one good shot. And it’s really
remarkable, the amount of preparation that it takes to get one good shot.

HENRY: What
kind of camera are you using?

DON: This is
a Red One camera. It’s digital HD
technology, but not the absolute latest.
It’s just a little bit older, and my director of photography, Virgil
Harper, knows how to get the very best out of it. We’re getting an incredibly good look – the
visual is just stunning.

HENRY: A lot
of people are very upset at the disappearance of celluloid in exchange for digital. How do you feel about it?

DON: I
understand the purists, and in truth film is still a long-term preservation
medium. But when you can control each
pixel on the screen, you really don’t need film. You can make it look like anything. So as far as I’m concerned, film is
unnecessary except for archival purposes.

HENRY: Are
you interested in making the video look like film, or do you just let it look
the way it looks?

DON: No, there’s a whole lot that goes into making
a film look cinematic. And Virgil knows
those secrets; I don’t. But there’s a
lot involved with setting up the chips so that they record a cinematic
look. You can do that also in post, but
he’s doing that here with the way he’s set up the camera, and filtration. He uses a lot of filters to give it that
cinematic look.

HENRY: Have
you given thought to the music you’re going to use?

DON: Well,
you know one of the stars is Pat Boone, and he’s going to sing a song at the
big wedding party at the end. He’s going
to sing ‘Old Time Religion,’ and everyone’s going to be dancing to that. Also, one of our actors, Nicholas Neve, plays
the violin; we discovered that in auditions, and we’ve woven that into the
story. Beautiful, beautiful scene
where he says goodbye to Grandma Mary, not knowing that this is the last
goodbye. And he plays ‘Just As I Am’ as
he walks down the road by himself, beautiful sun going down behind him.

HENRY: Do you
have any favorite Westerns?

DON: Virgil
and I watched a lot of them. John Ford
Westerns are of course the best. The
control of the frame – he gets the right things in front of the camera, and he
arranges them so cinematically. John
Ford is by far the best teacher for Westerns – without question. There’re others too, but nobody measures up.

EMILY HOFFMAN interview

Emily Hoffman plays Melinda, the thirteen-year-old
whose search for her father’s identity is the core of BOONVILLE REDEMPTION’s
story. We didn’t have much time to chat,
because she was in virtually every shot on the day I was there, but we talked
for a minute or two between takes, while she petted a horse. She, and Nicholas Neve, who plays Melinda’s
companion, Shakespeare, are two of the nicest, most enthusiastic, genuine, and
patient kids I’ve ever met on a set.

HENRY: Is
this your first starring feature?

Emily Hoffman

EMILY HOFFMAN:
Yes it is, and it’s really exciting.
It’s a big thing for me, and it’s surreal, I’ll tell you. I’ve been getting used to it, and how it
works, and it’s awesome.

HENRY: How
long have you been filming?

EMILY: I’ve been acting since I was six and a half;
but I’ve been filming this movie for about three weeks now.

Pat Boone & Emily

HENRY: What had you done previously?

EMILY: I’ve
done some short films. I’ve done some
music videos, voice-overs, and modeling.

HENRY: I’m
guessing this is your first Western.

EMILY: Yeah (laughs) It’s so cool to see what they
wore back then; how there was no air-conditioning back then, which sucks. And how they acted. It’s cool.

After the 1906 Earthquake --

Emily and Nicholas Neve

HENRY: Is
this your first period film of any kind?

EMILY: I
believe so and it’s awesome. I like to time-travel.

PETER SHERAYKO Interview

Ever since TOMBSTONE, where he played Texas Jack
Vermillion before the camera, and was in charge of the authenticity of props,
costumes, saddles and the expert riders known as the The Buckaroos, Peter Sherayko has been the go-to guy for getting
Westerns right. He’s written a pair of
books, TOMBSTONE: THE GUN AND GEAR, and THE FRINGE OF HOLLYWOOD – THE ART OF
MAKING A WESTERN – you’ll find his site HERE. I asked Peter what his job is on

BOONVILLE
REDEMPTION.

Peter Sherayko and me

PETER SHERAYKO:
We at Caravan West are doing
everything – the props, the set dressing, the costumes, the horses, the
saddles, and the guns, and Sheri Keenan, my assistant, is handling all of the
background people. That’s the Caravan West side of it. The Peter Sherayko side of it is I’m the
armorer. It’s not a gun-heavy movie,
it’s a gun-light movie. And I’m also the
stunt coordinator, and I’m playing the part of Jack, who is ranch-hand to the
main bad guy.

HENRY: Now
you were just recently working on the second season of QUICK DRAW, the Hulu
series, here at Paramount Ranch.

PETER: We
finished that earlier this year. The
second season of QUICK DRAW comes out in August, and we’re anxiously waiting
for a third season to come up. And Nancy
and John, who are the producers, director and star of the show, want us to come
back and do more stuff. They just did an
interview with the L.A. Times, and
the reporter called me up, wants to interview me regarding the Buckaroos, and putting everything into
the shows.

HENRY:
Terrific – that’s the kind of exposure you want.

PETER: It
would be nice to be in the L.A. Times,
yes. The end of last year we did HOT
BATH, STIFF DRINK2, and I just got a call that we’re going to do HOT BATH,
STIFF DRINK 3. But then I’m negotiating
with another show, it’s a ten-episode documentary series for FOX TV. They want me to do everything – not only what
we normally do, but they also want me to get the medic, and the water truck,
and the fire department and the permits, and hotels. The company is Warm Springs, and they’re out
of Montana. They’re the ones who do the
series MOUNTAIN MEN. So the supervising
producer, we’ve worked together on four different shows. And he just said, when we do a Western
series, we know who to call.

HENRY: Would this be a show done in Montana?

PETER: No, it
would be done here. We plan on doing ten
weeks, five days a week. Three days a
week at my ranch, and they want to book Melody Ranch for the other two days, to
do the recreations.

HENRY: So
it’s documentary recreations of what?

PETER:
Documentary series on ten people: Davy Crockett, Butch Cassidy, Wild
Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Kit Carson, Custer, the real Lone
Ranger – supposedly the Lone Ranger was based on a real character, but not so
much like Clayton Moore played him.
Black Bart, and there’s one more that escapes me – it’s like trying to
name the seven dwarfs.

HENRY: How
did you get involved in BOONVILLE REDEMPTION?

PETER: Don,
the director called me last year, and he said he was trying to do this nice
family movie about this little girl and her mother. We came out, shot here one day, and we did
about four scenes. They cut it together,
and then they tried to raise the money all year. And they raised the money, and they called me
about two months ago. They said Ed
Asner’s going to be on the movie, Pat Boone, Diane Ladd, Robert Hayes, me, and
can you put everything together? I said
yeah, I’d be glad to. We’re doing a 24
day shoot and having a great time.

HENRY:
Twenty-four days – that’s a long shoot.

PETER: It’s a
long shoot. I’m working as an actor
about eight days, I’m working as a stunt coordinator three days, and
supervising everything else is every other day – every day.

HENRY: What’s
so far been the biggest challenge on this production?

PETER: The
biggest challenge for me is getting everything right with very little
preparation time. We have a very tight
schedule. We have a different
designer. I have a way of doing things,
and they have their way, and it took a few weeks until I could get into their
rhythm. I know the West. I always
pre-plan everything. I look at every set
that’s there, I go this is what’s going to go in this set: this, this, this and
this. And I get it all lined up. Other people work in a different way. So they didn’t line it up. And then they have people pulling it, but it’s
not the stuff that I’m saying to pull, so it’s kind of a hectic thing.

HENRY: When
you say pulling it, you mean pulling props.

PETER: Going
to my ranch, going to the buildings and getting the props. I’m literally doing nine jobs on this movie,
and I can’t be at all places at all times.

HENRY: You’re
a purist when it comes to historical accuracy.
So when you’re, let’s say, picking saddles, how many saddles would you
have of your own to choose from?

PETER: I have
over sixty period saddles. So it’s 1906;
I’m playing the ranch hand, for instance, who is the old guy. So the saddle that I’m riding in the movie,
my character bought twenty-odd years ago.
So it’s an 1880s saddle, not a 1906 saddle. But for the sheriff as well as the deputy, I
have a loop-seat saddle that came out in the mid to late 1880s. Then for the main bad-guy, Maddox, I have a
brand-new saddle of the 1900 period. So
depending on who it is, I’m designing every saddle.

HENRY: So
you’re casting saddles to characters.

PETER: I’m
casting saddles as well as firearms. For
Maddox, I have him having an 1877 Colt Lightning, a double-action gun which
they made into the early 20th century, which you don’t usually see
in movies. For his throw-away gun I’m
using an 1890s style double-action top-break gun. And the sheriff and the deputy, who are the
only other ones in the movie carrying guns, I’m giving them Colt single
actions. The Colt single actions from
1902 to 1906, that’s the gun they made the most of, so I’m giving them the
standard gun of that time

HENRY: So that late, into the 20th
century, they were still making more single-action than double-action guns?

PETER: They
were making more single-actions in the early part of the 20th
century. They may have been making them
because they had more parts to put together, so they said, let’s get rid of
these, so we can start promoting the newer style guns, but historically that’s
what they were doing. And because it’s
California 1906, that’s basically what a lawman would be carrying.

HENRY: Looks
like quite a bit of rolling-stock out there.
Are they yours?

PETER: Yes, I
have seven wagons on the show. I had
four; I just purchased three more.

HENRY: Are
these reproductions?

PETER: No
they’re all originals; they could go back as far as the 1880s. I found three of them in June when I was
doing a book-signing in Grass Valley. I
found a guy who had twenty wagons.

SHERI KEENAN Interview

HENRY: How long have you worked with Peter Sherayko?

SHERI KEENAN: About a year and a half. I live in the next town, in sister
towns. There was a write-up about him in
our local magazine, and it sounded like it fit my background pretty well, and I
thought I might be able to assist him.
So I wrote him an introductory letter.
He called me right back, and here I am.

HENRY: Is this your first job in the film industry?

Sheri Keenan -- made up for the earthquake

SHERI: In the film industry proper, yes, but not my
first job in the entertainment industry.
I worked for Disney for fourteen years.
I started off at the Park, which was really fun, and then I moved on to
Imagineering.

HENRY: How many Westerns have you worked on since
you started working for Peter?

SHERI: What’s
interesting about that is I think I’ve worked on as many non-Westerns as
Westerns, which I didn’t expect. One
thing about the western genre is, even though it’s a western, it could be a
commercial, or it could be a rock video.
The other thing is, Peter has his ranch, which we utilize for locations
quite a bit, and that brings in all sorts of other projects, and other times
periods. They wanted it to look like
Jonestown, in South America the other day, and flew in an airplane. So you just never know – that’s the exciting
part of the job.

HENRY: You
fit me with clothes and boots for this one.
Are you the background wardrobe person on this one?

SHERI: I can’t
take credit for that. Peter is unique in
that when he supplies background, they come prepared dressed and ready-to-go,
in their period attire. For this we’ve
had a lot of women, which we don’t normally have in a Western. They have their own wardrobe, but I am doing
more and more wardrobe.

HENRY: What
are your duties on this production?

SHERI: My
title on this is background casting. And
because Peter is also doing set design and props and wardrobe, and is required
on the set, and I get to come out for that as well.

HENRY: Where
do you see the Western industry going? Do
you expect to see more and more?

SHERI: I
certainly hope so, for my future of course, selfishly so. It does seem like we’re heading into a resurgence, an upswing of interest.

Sheri among the 'backgrounds'

HENRY: Do you
ride?

SHERI: I do,
I grew up trail-riding, and competing every once in a while in horse shows.

HENRY: Have
you gotten on a horse in any of these productions?

SHERI: Sadly, no.
Not much call for a riding lady in the 1880s. however, I do ride quite often at the ranch
with Pete.

When I contacted writer/executive producer Judy
Belshe-Toernblom to find out where the production stands, she was enthusiastic. “We believe we are in our last edits. We then will proceed to
color corrections, sound, v.o. work (looping) and finally music.We have some great interest but are
waiting until it is in the highest form it can be for showing to distributors.
We have had some test screenings and the feedback from them has been so
helpful.We hope to get a 2015 release. This is all in the Lords
hands but we are using the hands that He gave us to help. It's like Joel Osteen
says "Do all that you can and then God will do what you can't." I’ll keep posting updates as thing progress, but you can
also check out the official website HERE.

‘99CENT MOVIE NETWORK’ LAUNCHES WITH FOUR WESTERN
COLLECTIONS!

As promised, the folks behind the Movies & Music Network have launched
a new streaming movie network called the 99centNetwork. They’re going to be
offering several ten-film collections – including four different Western
collections – and you can select any three movies from a collection for
ninety-nine cents! For $1.99, you can
buy all ten! Heck, for eight bucks you
can buy all forty Westerns! And these films
are yours to stream for life – you can even share ‘em with your friends! There’s some cheap Christmas shopping for
you!

They’re also offering movie collections in other
genres, including, horror, sci-fi, holiday, and something called Pink Eiga,
which appears to be Japanese soft porn.
But let’s talk about Westerns! In
Collection #1, high points include ONE-EYED JACKS, directed by and starring
Marlon Brando; Monte Hellman’s Spaghetti Western CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37, starring
Warren Oates; Dennis Hopper in the Aussie Western MAD DOG MORGAN; Lesley
Selander’s BUCKSKIN FRONTIER with Richard Dix and a great supporting cast; two
Roy Rogers films; a Buster Crabbe, and more.
Collection #2 features, among others, Sam Peckinpah’s first Western,
DEADLY COMPANIONS; two Bob Steeles; three Roy Rogers; and Enzo Castellari’s
excellent ANY GUN CAN PLAY, starring Edd Byrnes, George Hilton and Gilbert
Roland – incidentally, Enzo was in L.A. last week, speaking at USC, screening
KEOMA, and discussing a new Western he’s planning with Franco Nero.

Arthur Gardner, who came to
Hollywood to be an actor, then became a very successful producer of series like
THE RIFLEMAN and THE BIG VALLEY, and features like SAM WHISKEY and THE
SCALPHUNTERS, has died at 104. After
playing a small role as a German soldier in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, he
joined the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Force during World War II,
helping make military training films at Hal Roach Studios. There he met the two men who would become his
production partners, Jules Levy and Arnold Lavin, who would form GARDNER-LEVY-LAVIN
PRODUCTIONS, a company whose name became synonymous with ground-breaking,
high-quality Western productions for big-screen and small.

Johnny Crawford, who starred in THE
RIFLEMAN as Mark McCain, recalled on his Facebook post, “I first met him in
January 1958. One day, after school, my mother drove me to Hal Roach Studios to
be interviewed for an episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. That episode
was also the pilot for The Rifleman,
and Mr. Gardner was one of the producers. He was a great role model and a dear
friend for many years.” Even at age 102,
Gardner was still going into his company’s Beverly Hills office regularly.

His autobiography was entitled THE
BADGER KID. Below is part one of Arthur
Gardner’s interview from the Archive of American Television.

As happens this time every year, twenty-five films
have been added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry. Among them are several Westerns: RIO BRAVO (1959), Howard Hawks’ and John
Wayne’s contemptuous response to HIGH NOON; LITTLE BIG MAN (1970), Arthur
Penn’s entirely different take on Custer’s Last Stand; RUGGLES OF RED GAP
(1935), where transplanted English butler Charles Laughton proves himself more
American than his employers; and STATE FAIR (1933), the first of three filmed
versions of Philip Strong’s novel, starring Will Rogers. Among the non-Western films named to the list
are ROSEMARY’S BABY, FERRIS BEULLER’S DAY OFF, HOUSE OF WAX and SAVING PRIVATE
RYAN. For the complete list, go
here: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2014/14-210.html

‘YELLOW
ROCK’ CHRISTMAS NIGHT ON SONY MOVIE CHANNEL

December
25th at 10:40 pm, Pacific time, after you’ve finished unwrapping
everything, and consumed as much food as you dare, you can catch YELLOW ROCK,
the 2012 Western Heritage Award – Bronze Wrangler – Best Picture winner,
starring Michael Biehn, James Russo and Lenore Andriel.

THANK YOU READERS!
‘ROUND-UP’ REACHES 200,000 HITS!

Last night, the number of times folks have visited
the Round-up since I started posting in January of 2010 surpassed 200,000! Today, the top ten countries reading Round-up
are The United States, France, The Ukraine, Germany, The Netherlands, Canada,
Romania, China, Australia and Norway! We’re
read regularly in over ninety-five countries, and my gratitude to all of you
around the world who have made Henry’s Western Round-up an important source for
your Western information is overwhelming.
I am sure you realize that it takes a huge amount of time and work every
week, and your support, and encouraging messages, makes it all worthwhile. I am more grateful to you all than I know how
to express.

THAT’S A WRAP!

It’s already Chanukah, almost Christmas, and New
Years is just around the bend. Here’s
wishing all of you a wonderful celebration, a pause to appreciate your
blessings, and high hopes for a spectacular 2015!

Happy Trails!

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright December 2014 by
Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

In August I was invited to spend a day on the set of
BOONVILLE REDEMPTION, the new Western that was filming at Paramount Ranch in Agoura.
In addition, I was given the opportunity to be a ‘background’ in the
film – for that part of the story, go HERE.

Set shortly after the turn of the 20th
century, the tale is located, significantly, in the real town on Boonville, in
Northern California. That town is
unique, in possessing its own recognized language, Boontling, and that baffling
lingo plays an important part in the movie’s plot. The story revolves around thirteen-year-old
Melinda (Emily Hoffman), who is treated by many with scorn, even though she is
the stepdaughter of the most powerful man in the Valley, Maddox (Richard
Tyson). When she learns that she was
born out of wedlock, she is determined to unlock the mystery of her true
father’s identity, and what became of him, a mystery wrapped up in the
enigmatic language of Boontling.

No stranger to the rural life of the film’s
characters, Pat Boone grew up on his parents’ dairy farm in Nashville. He laughs about the time he guested on THE
TONIGHT SHOW, and told Johnny Carson that he’d milked many a cow. Band-leader Doc Severinsen countered that
he’d also grown up milking cows, and Carson set up a milking contest. Pat Boone won, but he admits that it wasn’t
quite fair. “Doc started the orchestra playing
‘Turkey in the Straw’ for one minute. I
followed him, and I got twice as much milk.
But what he didn’t take into account, and I didn’t either, but when you
start milking a cow, it doesn’t start flowing freely at first – you have to start
pulling the milk down. He got about a
quart, but when I sat down, the cow was ready, so I got two quarts. And he was so chagrined to be out-milked by
a pop singer.”

Pat as Doc Wood, waiting for his cue

DOC WOODS: “I did my duty; I brought you into this
world, but it would give me great pleasure to take you out again.” Pat Boone loves that line, loves that his
character, Doc Woods, has an edge to him. “I see the doctor very like Doc from GUNSMOKE.
I see this as a Jimmy Stewart kind of thing. And Jimmy Stewart’s best
characters are when he lets his faults show.
He’s irritable, he’s cantankerous, he’s judgmental, flinty, but when the
chips are down and someone needs him, he’ll rise to the occasion. I love this about this character. Also, it’s
my first Western ever. I did about
sixteen other films, but they were movie musicals, and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF
THE EARTH, and romantic comedies…”

HENRY: And PERILS OF
PAULINE; I loved that.

PAT: Did
you? Did you know, PERILS OF PAULINE was
supposed to be a TV series? We filmed
most of the film as pilot, and ensuing segments for a series. But it didn’t get sold for some reason, and
so they went ahead and added more scenes, and made a movie out of it. And I loved playing that character too; the
completely naïve multi-millionaire. I
played somebody like that with Debbie Reynolds and Walter Matthau in a film
called GOODBYE, CHARLIE. And so I probably, to many people, embody that kind of
character, that’s almost too good,
goody-goody, but kindly, and you like him.
But you don’t expect anything confrontational out of him.

HENRY: How would you describe BOONVILLE REDEMPTION?

PAT BOONE: It’s
almost like an Agatha Christie Western.
We consider this a faith-based film, which is entertainment for the
whole, broad audience, but from a faith perspective. It’s not preaching to anybody, but turn of
the century, most everybody went to some kind of church. And they believed in the Golden Rule, things
that are Biblical. And so that emerges
from time to time in the script.
There’s a scene where a man’s been shot, and Doc, when he tries to go
into the wound in his chest, discovers – this was my idea – that he had a New
Testament in his pocket. And in that New
Testament was a little wooden cross. And
the bullet goes right through the cross, shatters it, splinters it, and the
Bible, into the guy’s chest – because it was a big gun he shot him with. But Doc, when he sees the man’s still living,
and sees why he didn’t die, though he still could, he says Lord, you did your
part. Please help me do mine. I like the imagery.

HENRY: You
mentioned that this is your first Western.
Are you a Western fan?

PAT:
Definitely, yes. I mean, who
isn’t? That’s the good thing about
Westerns; you can count on them. They’ll
never go away.

HENRY: They
do seem to be making a comeback.

PAT: And you
know, now is time for a film like this.
And TV series like BONANZA and WAGON TRAIN. And films where the good guys always
won. And yes, they may have had faults
and foibles, and they always had problems.
You knew the bad guy was going to get what he deserved, and yet you
wanted to see how it happened. And you
felt good at the end of it; it just reinforced your faith in the backbone of
early America. And that’s what endeared
us to the rest of the world; that was one of our most important exports to the
world. Our Western films, where the bad
guy got what he deserved, and the good people won. It was never a downer. There’s reinforcement of good moral
values. So the rest of the world envied
America. Now, for the last several
decades, we’ve been exporting, to huge success, shows like DALLAS, and many
other shows where people do all kind of evil tings, and they’re Americans, and
they’re rich, and all they care about is their money, and their dynasty, and
their power. And they win.

At this moment, director Don Schroeder stops by to
ask Pat about a schedule change for over the weekend. Does Pat have a preference from a couple of
options? He says the only thing he likes
to not miss on Saturday is his workout at the gym. No problem – they’ll schedule around it. They talk for a moment about how the editing
is coming along, and how convincing Pat is as the crusty old Dr. Wood.

PAT: It’s
funny; when I put on the clothes, this mustache, I just feel older. I walk – these shoes, of course, are platypus
feet shoes, and that works.

HENRY: How
did you get involved with this project?

PAT: It’s
interesting; I think I was meant to be involved. First off, my name was Boone, and my dad and
granddad did the genealogical search and traced our way direct back to Daniel
Boone, I think to his son Morgan. So
I’ve always been proud of that, and a little bit miffed when Fess Parker, who
played Davy Crocket, then was picked to play Daniel Boone as well. I thought wait a minute, I’m an actual direct
descendant – why don’t I play him? Didn’t happen, but that was okay; Fess was
great. Now, it was only about a year ago
one of my musicians said to me, are you aware that there’s a town in northern
California called Boonville? They have
their own language – they created an alternative language. They speak English, of course, but they
created many alternative words and phrases so they could speak in front of outsiders,
and the outsider wouldn’t know what they were talking about, for just a little
extra privacy, that rural people like.
Boontling, it’s called. So I got
interested in that, just idly, thinking I’ve just got to visit Boonville some
day, and walk among my fellow descendants of Daniel. So my musical director for thirty years is
scoring the music for this film. And he
was talking to the director Dan Schroeder, who was just here. And he said, you know, I work for Pat
Boone. Do you think there might be a
role in your film for him? He said, you
work for Pat Boone? Well, it’s a
modestly budgeted film, but if he’d like to, yes. And if not, maybe he’d like to help us get
the rest of the funding for the film. So
I met with them, and I read the script, and I loved the story. And they said, we see you as Doc Wood. And I said, I will be Doc Wood, and not only
that, I will help you get the rest of the funding. And I did, and I invested materially in it
myself, because I think it’s a good film.
I’ve been involved with a number of good films. And the fact that it’s a Western, and the
fact that it’s faith-based, the fact that I liked the part, and I believed in
these people that are making it. And the
music, there will be some of my music woven into the score, because I’ve done
at least twenty gospel albums --

HENRY: It
won’t be LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND?

PAT: It won’t
be LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND, but twenty gospel albums, and about four of them,
country gospel, southern country gospel.
And so we’re going to close, when the problems are solved and the
victories are won, and there’s a wedding, and everyone wants to celebrate,
we’re going to close with a rousing rendition of I SAW THE LIGHT. There’ll be a square-dance, and everyone’ll
be celebrating. I was worried about that
– they wanted me to do a solo. I said,
I’ll be wearing this mustache, because I want to look old, I want to look like
a country doctor. And when I start
singing, if Pat Boone’s voice comes out, won’t that be a bit incongruous? So they’re just going to play my record. And people who recognize my voice, it’s okay;
the movie is over. They know I played
Doc Wood, but I’ll stay in character, I’ll still be Doc Wood all the way to the
titles. But that’s how this came about,
just a weird set of circumstances. My
name is Boone. It’s called BOONVILLE
REDEMPTION. There’s no ‘e’ in
Boonville. There are some records that
say Daniel Boone didn’t spell it with an ‘e’ either. ‘D. Boon kild a bar,’ someone found carved on
a tree. And I hope I’m a boon to the film.

JUDY BELSHE-TOERNBLOM

HENRY: You’re
both the writer and executive producer of BOONVILLE REDEMPTION. How did the story come to you?

Judy Belshe-Toernblom

JUDY BELSHE-TOERNBLOM: It’s been seven years in the works. We had taken a trip up north to Lakeport, to
visit a friend. And I don’t like to
return the way that I go. So I always
look for interesting places to stop off on the way back, and one of the places
I saw was Boonville. And I saw that they
had this quirky language called ‘Boontling’, so I thought, I’m going to go
there, just what to see what that’s all about.
When I got there, it was nothing; just a little dusty town, and I
couldn’t find anyone to speak Boontling, and I thought, this just doesn’t seem
right. I found books about Boontling,
and they would give you the English words.
But as I began to want to know more about it, I discovered I needed to
flip the words around, so I wrote the book ENGLISH TO BOONTLING. I just used the nice words; I left all the
bad words out. I began to use it as a
dictionary for myself, and I fell in love with the place. Well, I began to learn where the Boontlingers
were hiding. We ran across Ite, which is
Boontling for Italian, and his (real) name is Don Cardini. Then I ran across Donald Smoot, whose name is
Deekan, because he was a shy boy, and to ‘deek’ means to stare. Not like ‘deacon’ of a church. Then we ran across a young man named Jeff
Spiffy Burrows. And Jiffy took us all
over the valley, showed all the hidden spots where things used to be; if I made
an album of it, it would be a large album of empty lots. (laugh)
But I began to get more and more flavor for this place. I went to Boonville twice, I interviewed the
people, and I talked to the historical society, and as I began to hear about
the history, I began to think that this was a charming time for this town. So this story began to unfold. And I write very fast, but just skin and
bones, it didn’t have form yet.

HENRY: What
time is the story set?

JUDY: It’s
set in 1906. It starts thirteen years
earlier, when our little girl is conceived.
Now she’s thirteen, and old enough to ask questions. And she wants to know, ‘What did I do?’ Because the town scorns her, because she was
born out of wedlock. And then the
richest man in town, who is a really bad guy, took (her mother) in and married
her, because he always wanted her. But the
girl’s left with this kind of ‘ick’ on her life, and she wants answers. And in that process she discovers that people
held a lot of secrets. Therefore, it’s BOONVILLE
REDEMPTION, when we come through all the secrets. While I was writing it, I was writing another
film, and it was just a good family film.
And I kept hearing God’s voice saying, “Where’s my part?” And I kept thinking, yeah, I’m just writing a
good family film, but I’m not writing a Christian film. And I kept getting that knocking on my heart;
that still, small voice that you hear.
And I thought, my people have some problems, and these problems
shouldn’t be the kind that they just work out with a pencil. They need to show their trust in God, how God
can turn an impossible situation around.
And so each one of our characters, each one of our heroes, from all
different walks of life, all different nationalities, they have to reconcile
their faith versus their superstitions, versus their false doctrine, and come
to the realization that if they trust God, all heck may break loose, but
they’re going to get the better result by trusting God, and that’s what they
do. I think in this story, we all get to
make our own choices, but we don’t get to decide the results.

HENRY: I
understand that you started shooting this about a year ago, with a trial
sequence. How did that work out?

JUDY: We
didn’t have any money. We had three
backers at that time, and there wasn’t enough money to shoot – especially a
period piece. We went back to our
investors, and said we don’t have enough money to make this film, so we’re
done. To even do a trailer is going to
cost us several thousand dollars. Our
investors came to us and said, ‘We’re going to give it to you.’ So we came here to Paramount Ranch. We brought
our director Don Schroeder, (cinematographer) Virgil Harper, and these men –
the only thing missing about them are wings.
They’re amazing men. They took
ahold of this script, and they worked on it; no compensation, they just wanted
to see this happen. And they made an
incredible trailer at that time, which was basically the proof of concept. And we thought, this is great; we’ve got
something good, we can go back to more investors, we can try to get more money,
enough to shoot this film. Along the way
we ran into a few people, Pat Boone being one of them, who ultimately became
one of our investors. And as a result,
no one ever saw the proof of concept trailer except for us and our close
friends and family, because the money was raised on God moving the hearts of
our investors, and the story.I was
entrusted with the story from God, and tried to keep it scripturally accurate,
so nobody has any issues with it, and so it can be used as a Bible-study later
on.

HENRY: Is the
entire film being shot here at Paramount
Ranch?

JUDY: No, we
were at a couple of different locations.
We were at Ventura Farms, over at Saddle Rock, and the remainder is
being shot here because we need all of the town shots. But we had the houses, and beautiful terrain
back there. Along with six million flies
and seven thousand bumblebees. Yuck, it
was horrible. I mean, the bees were so
strong that they could carry your ham sandwich away. Ridiculous.

HENRY: The
story takes place in the early 20th century. Do you consider it a Western? Is that your genre?

JUDY: You
know, it is a Western, but it’s not a Western like ‘O.K. Corral’, okay? It just happens that we’re in that era. And that story itself is universal. It doesn’t matter what generation sees this
film; they’re going to relate to the story.
We already have people coming up to us saying, ‘that scene where the
mother was abused, I went through that.’
‘That scene here brought me to tears.’
So I’m watching different themes of the story resonate with different
people for different reasons, and that is really cool.

HENRY: Who do
you see as the audience for this picture?

JUDY:
Everybody. We hit all four
quads. We have the youngest of the kids,
and we have as old as our grandma. And
we’ve got several nationalities. We’ve
got American Indian, we’ve got Spanish, we’ve got African American, we’ve got
Italian, Caucasian. Our African American
woman who is one of our stars is from Nigeria.
Her name is Stephanie
Okereke; she plays the part of Doris (Grandma’s housekeeper). The history is that the American slaves were
sold by the Nigerian people in the late 1700s.
She did not know this. We bring
that into our story. Doris realizes that
her father is probably in prison someplace.
And she says, if he’s in prison, we know what prison is about. We came from slavery, sold by our own
people. So we’re bringing in that
story.

HENRY:
Speaking of casting, you’ve assembled a remarkable cast. You told me that Pat Boone actually came in
as an investor. How about Ed Asner? How’d you get him?

JUDY: You
know, I needed a hanging judge, and I thought Ed Asner is a great hanging
judge. I wanted the guy who is just so fed up with little towns and all their
nonsense. He’s a circuit judge, and he
has to ride, and maybe he should have retired ten years earlier. He was presented to us through his agent, and
that was just it – he’s our guy. He read
it right away, and responded the very next day; he already had notes for
us. When your actors give you a note,
you’ve got to pay attention to it. My
feeling is criticism is a blessing, because that means they didn’t understand something,
or they need something clarified by us. He gave us some amazing notes, and we
made the adjustments that he thought would make it better.

HENRY: You
have Diane Ladd.

JUDY: Diane
Ladd came to us through our line producer, and we had wanted her for a long
time. So when the movie actually came to
fruition, we were able to get to her. This
woman was so tender and so sweet with the kids, you really believed that she
was their grandmother. There’s a boy in
the story, and she’s not his grandmother, but she treats him as one of her
own. She had ideas, and twists and
tweaks that she wanted to do on it also, and if it made sense we went with it,
and she’s got years and years of expertise, and so we need to do it. She was magic on the screen. As a matter of fact, one of the scenes she
was doing, Pat Boone was in, but he had to walk off; his character was
done. And she brought him to tears,
because it reminded him of when he said goodbye to his mom.

HENRY: I understand she speaks Boontling in the
movie.

JUDY: She
does. It’s the first movie to ever use
Boontling, and to use it in solving a mystery.

HENRY: That’s
fascinating. And of course this is a
Western, it’s a Christian film, and it’s also a mystery.

JUDY: We
needed the struggle, we needed the conflict, or there is no film. And the conflict works on both sides: why
isn’t someone giving up the information?
What are they going to lose if they give up the information. Everyone has something to lose if they
confess.

HENRY: I
watched the little documentary you have on the website. In a sense, this language was developed to
keep secrets. It didn’t just develop
organically because it was a population away from other people, and words just
developed. It was a consciously
developed thing.

JUDY: It was
organic, in the fact that, where my story-line comes from, there was a girl who
was pregnant, and nobody wanted to talk about it. So they began to talk about it in another
way. In a small valley like the Anderson
Valley, once you got in there, you were in; you didn’t want to haul those oxen
back over that hill again. So it was a
combination. Yes, they wanted to make up
some secret words about this girl, and then they began to use other words. There was a man in town named Jefferson, and
he always had a big fire going, summer, winter, spring or fall. So they began to call fires ‘jeffers.’ All things that worked with motors, that were
machines, were called ‘moshes’. So when
the first fire-engine came to town, it was called a jeffer-moshe. Schools were called wee-hees, because that
was the little house for little kids.
The first man in town to have a telephone was named Walter, and it cost
half a dollar to use, so a payphone was called a bucky walter. Peace-officers were called high-heelers, and
the book is full of stories of how those words came to be. So it may have started to keep the secret of
this girl, and then it just continued to grow to more than a thousand words in
their vocabulary.

HENRY:
Getting back to your cast, you also have Robert Hays.

JUDY: Robert
Hays came in for a really sweet cameo. I
wanted someone to play the pastor that the people liked. And everyone likes Robert Hays. And what I think they’re going to enjoy about
him is his kind nature. And I am very
personally tired of pastors being portrayed as insane maniacs who are out to
kill the entire church for whatever reason, or sleep with half of it. And I wanted a nice, believable, kind pastor,
and I hired Robert.

HENRY: Faith-based movies are getting a lot more
respect now than they were even a couple of years ago, because there’s been an
audience proven for them.

JUDY: Because they’re making good ones: just because
you’re Christian doesn’t mean you have the right to make a crappy film. “Oh, God will fix it in post.” No, He won’t.
You’ve got to make a good film.

Part Two of my BOONVILLE REDEMPTION story will
appear in next Sunday’s Round-up.

The folks behind the Movies & Music Network are launching a new streaming movie
network this Wednesday, called the 99cent
Network. They’re going to be
offering several ten-film collections – including three different Western
collections – and you can select any three from a collection for ninety-nine
cents! For $1.99, you can buy all
ten! Heck, for six bucks you can buy all
thirty Westerns! Too many exclamation
points? And these films are yours to
stream for life – you can even share ‘em with your friends! There’s some cheap Christmas shopping for
you!

They’ll also be offering movie collections in other
genres, including comedy, horror, sci-fi, holiday, and more. What Westerns will they be? I don’t know yet – I’m not even posting the
link here until Wednesday, because it won’t link to anything until then. Come back on Wednesday, hit the link, and you’ll
be magically transported to the 99cent Network! Or visit the Round-up Facebook page on Wednesday,
hit the link, and the same marvelous thing will happen! For all of you that are more involved with
social network stuff than I, I’ve got a couple of hash-tag things I’m supposed
to do something with, but cannot fathom what.
So I’ll put ‘em here: @99centnet #99centnetwork
. See you Wednesday!

MYSTERY AT MOVIE RANCH by Darryle Purcell – a Book
Review

Mystery readers’ love of Hollywood made it natural
that many a crime story would be set in the movie capital, cast with imaginary
stars at fictional studios. This gave
birth to a sub-genre of Hollywood mystery fiction where real stars were at the
center of the action – many a cowboy hero solved mysteries in Big Little Books,
and Lela E. Rogers wrote about her daughter in GINGER ROGERS AND THE RIDDLE OF
THE SCARLET CLOAK. Andrew Bergman, who
would later write the screenplays for the classic comedies BLAZING SADDLES, THE
IN-LAWS and HONEYMOON IN VEGAS, revived the idea in the 1970s with two
delightful bestselling comedy-mysteries set in Hollywood’s golden age, THE BIG
KISS-OFF OF 1944 and HOLLYWOOD AND LEVINE.
Following Bergman’s lead, Stuart Kaminsky would write twenty-four Toby
Peters mysteries, including, MILDRED PIERCED and MURDER ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD. George Baxt penned at least a dozen Jacob
Singer mysteries, including THE DOROTHY PARKER MURDER CASE and THE TALLULAH
BANKHEAD MURDER CASE.

Well, the subgenre has been dormant for a while, but
now Darryle Purcell has revived it with MYSTERY AT MOVIE RANCH, the first of
his Hollywood Cowboy Detective
series. The novelty here is that while
all of the previous movie star mysteries have been set at the majors – MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount – and
focused on the top box-office stars and directors of the day,

MOVIE RANCH is
set squarely on Poverty Row, at Mascot
Pictures no less! Set in 1934,
during the Great Depression, the detective character and wise-cracking narrator
is Sean Woods, an L.A. Examiner
reporter who got canned for offending important people, and now is working as a
P.R. man for Nat Levine’s studio. And
instead of focusing on Bogart or Gable making CASABLANCA or GONE WITH THE WIND,
Sean is trying to keep Ken Maynard sober long enough to finish making his
Mascot serial, MYSTERY MOUNTAIN. But
Maynard’s drinking is a small part of the problem – someone is trying to kill
the cowboy and scuttle the production.

As the cover art and illustrations by Purcell
indicate, MOVIE RANCH is meant as a pulp story. Told in twelve chapters, just
like a serial, Sean and Maynard enlist the aid of Maynard’s real pal Hoot
Gibson in trying to flush out the bad guys, utilizing Maynard’s and Gibson’s
real-life experience as plane pilots.
They deal with serial-like menaces, including sliding panels, a masked
villain known as The Viper, a secret fascist training camp, a
mad-scientist-created monster, and more real-life dangers like the Klan, Nazis,
and Lucky Luciano, who is planning to unionize Hollywood under his control –
while squiring around poor, doomed Thelma Todd.
MOVIE RANCH really is a name-dropper’s delight, with Russ Columbo, Art
Acord, Syd Saylor, Snub Pollard, George Chesebro, and even Flip the Frog turning
up either as characters or references.

In terms of the writing and story-telling, Purcell
is breezy and entertaining, but not yet up to the standards of Bergman and
Kaminsky. I didn’t get a great sense of
time and place – I never figured out which movie ranch it was supposed to
be. Some of the dialogue is stilted and
tends towards speechifying. On the other
hand, if you read Lucky Luciano’s speeches aloud, you can hear Sheldon Leonard
saying every word, which is just how he ought to sound.

The second mystery in the series, MYSTERY OF THE
ARIZONA DRAGON, is already available for download, and soon will be in paper as
well. Set during the filming of CHARLIE
CHAN GOES WEST, it unites Sean, Ken and Hoot with Warner Oland and Keye Luke. Number three, MYSTERY OF THE MATINEE MURDERS,
will add Orson Welles and Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan to the mix – now that’s a pair
to draw to! MOVIE RANCH is available
from Amazon.com here HERE.

TCM SHOWCASES DISNEY WESTERNS NEXT SUNDAY!

As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago (HERE is
the story if you missed it). TCM and Disney are joining forces, and
bringing a lot of Walt’s rarely seen treasures out of the vault.They will be shown in occasional programming
blocks a few times a year, commencing this Sunday, December 21st, at
5 p.m. Pacific time.Here’s the
schedule: Three classic cartoons, SANTA’S WORKSHOP, ON ICE – with Mickey and
Minnie, and CHIP & DALE.5:30, THE
DISNEYLAND STORY.6:30, THE RELUCTANT
DRAGON (1941), starring Robert Benchley. 8:00, DAVY CROCKETT: KING OF THE WILD
FRONTIER, starring Fess Parker.9:45 THE
VANISHING PRAIRIE (1954), the nature documentary by which all others are
measured.11:00 THIRD MAN ON THE
MOUNTAIN (1959), starring James McArthur.And finally, at one a.m., WALT DISNEY PRESENTS, featuring the making of
THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN and 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.

THAT'S A WRAP!

Week I'll conclude my story on BOONVILLE REDEMPTION, and have a review or two, depending on how much reading and how much watching I manage between Christmas-shopping safaris.

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Contents Copyright December 2014 by Henry C. Parke - All Right Reserved